The investment philosophy practiced by Warren Buffett calls for investors to take a long-term horizon when making an investment, such as a five year holding period (or even longer), and reconsider making the investment in the first place if unable to envision holding the stock for at least five years. Today, we look at how such a long-term strategy would have done for investors in Fidelity National Information Services Inc (NYSE: FIS) back in 2015, holding through to today.

FIS 5-Year Return Details

Start date:

05/12/2015

$10,00005/12/2015

$21,40405/11/2020

End date:

05/11/2020

Start price/share:

$64.00

End price/share:

$128.24

Starting shares:

156.25

Ending shares:

166.93

Dividends reinvested/share:

$6.01

Total return:

114.07%

Average annual return:

16.43%

Starting investment:

$10,000.00

Ending investment:

$21,404.52

As shown above, the five year investment result worked out exceptionally well, with an annualized rate of return of 16.43%. This would have turned a $10K investment made 5 years ago into $21,404.52 today (as of 05/11/2020). On a total return basis, that’s a result of 114.07% (something to think about: how might FIS shares perform over the next 5 years?). [These numbers were computed with the Dividend Channel DRIP Returns Calculator.]

Many investors out there refuse to own any stock that lacks a dividend; in the case of Fidelity National Information Services Inc, investors have received $6.01/share in dividends these past 5 years examined in the exercise above. This means total return was driven not just by share price, but also by the dividends received (and what the investor did with those dividends). For this exercise, what we’ve done with the dividends is to assume they are reinvestted — i.e. used to purchase additional shares (the calculations use closing price on ex-date).

Based upon the most recent annualized dividend rate of 1.4/share, we calculate that FIS has a current yield of approximately 1.09%. Another interesting datapoint we can examine is ‘yield on cost’ — in other words, we can express the current annualized dividend of 1.4 against the original $64.00/share purchase price. This works out to a yield on cost of 1.70%.

Another great investment quote to think about:“Your success in investing will depend in part on your character and guts and in part on your ability to realize, at the height of ebullience and the depth of despair alike, that this too, shall pass.” — Jack Bogle